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There are car parks at all our ports excluding Yarmouth and Portsmouth Harbour. Yarmouth has a large public car park 5 minutes’ walk from the port and Portsmouth Harbour is 15 mins walk from our Gunwharf Car Park (opposite the car ferry terminal).
The car parks at Gunwharf, Fishbourne, Lymington and Ryde Pier Head are managed independently by Gemini. Customers have the first 20 minutes free to drop off but must buy a ticket if staying longer than this.
All of our car parks are cashless. You can pay for your parking of up to three days using the RingGo app on your phone, meaning you no longer need to put tickets on your windscreen. You can even extend your session through your phone if you plan on staying a little longer.
Alternatively, you can use the designated ticket machines in the car parks to pay with your card for up to 24 hours parking.
Ryde Pier Head and Fishbourne parking is pay and display.
Parking spaces cannot be reserved. Our Parking guide will give you full details.
We understand that a cancellation due to the absence of a member of the crew is frustrating and disrupts our customers’ travel plans. We only cancel sailings as a last resort when we are unable to cover an absent, essential member of our crew at short notice.
Safety is paramount:
Safety is our number one priority, and we will never compromise safety by undertaking a sailing without the correct level of crewing to safeguard our passengers.
All Wightlink crew require the highest level of STCW (Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping) to maintain the best standards of safety for our customers. Our training is achieved through continuous professional development, which is in excess of legislative requirements, and ensures all crew have the required knowledge to deal with any emergency scenario.
The health of our seafarers is also important. We regularly send every one of our crew for an external health assessment by a doctor registered with the coastguard. There are many common medical conditions that can be managed on land that would severely impact a seafarer’s ability to carry out their emergency duties. Seafarers have very stringent standards to meet and if for any reason they can’t, even temporarily, they are stood down from work.
How do Wightlink manage members of the crew?
Wightlink build rosters based on our timetables to ensure that all sailings are fully staffed. Colleagues are activated to work on a set of sailings, other colleagues are allocated to a reserve status to cover for any absences, and finally a set number of colleagues are allocated to rest days or on holiday. The building of these rosters ensures that the timetable can be run, with resource available to cover for any last-minute gaps, whilst other staff are rested to be able to run future sailings and comply with legislation.
Our ship’s crew are governed by strict working time directives, which means they may not always be able to cover a shift on their rest days or change their shifts without breaching the rules. The directives are in place to prevent fatigue and protect our staff and customers from harm.
Annual Leave is also heavily regulated, and we have a policy in place to restrict the number of crew allowed on leave at any one time.
Wightlink invests heavily in staff welfare to help prevent sickness. We have a 24-hour staff Occupational Health Service and offer Flu vaccines etc annually.
Requirements of members of the Wightlink crew?
All crew undertake ‘familiarisation’ onboard the ships they are to work on. This is completed in full and depending on the crew person’s rank can take over six months. Familiarisation includes ship specific training on critical safety equipment, emergency drills and local navigational knowledge that is bespoke for a particular ship and / or route. Crew cannot be taken from one ship to another without the familiarisation of the vessel being up to date which is why we train and familiarise by route and cannot safely take crew from one route to another at short notice. Additionally, ships officers in Portsmouth are required to sit exams with both Portsmouth and Southampton harbour masters to gain local knowledge certification which takes many months of study and practical experience to gain.
When a member of the crew is absent, why can’t a replacement quickly be sourced to cover the gap?
When a member of the crew reports an absence we will always do all we can to cover the role and avoid cancellations. However, we can only select a replacement crew member if they conform to the strict requirements of the ship’s crew that are set out in the section above.
Our Resource Planning Team have developed internal processes whereby days of high frequency sailings will trigger alerts so that additional personnel can be rostered onboard and ashore to cover any last-minute absence or assist with loading and discharging the vessels.
Wightlink is very fortunate to have a dedicated workforce with many IOW residents forming the backbone of the ship crews. When recruiting new staff one of the key qualities we look for is flexible working. This enables our planning departments to move crews around at short notice and avoid cancellations.
Why don’t you recruit more members of staff and train them in order to cover absence in the future?
Wightlink continually monitor staffing levels to ensure that we have the right number available to operate our fleet of ships. We have an excess number of crew to cover for absence already, for instance on our Lymington to Yarmouth route we have eight Masters (Captains), but only ever run a maximum of five roster turns in a day. Our crewing levels are optimised so we have spare capability across all ranks and roles, but not to a level where we are so over resourced that staff members are unproductive during times of standard operation, creating an inefficient operation.
Selected members of our management team also maintain competency levels regarding certain crewing positions, so they can step in regarding any last-minute absence.
We run regular recruitment activity and always seek to be proactive to ensure that potential staffing gaps are anticipated and mitigated. Review of future staffing needs is a core activity regarding for our business.
Who are essential members of the crew?
Certain positions onboard the ship are categorised as ‘essential’ as they form part of the number of staff that must be onboard to safely sail the ship with a certain number of passengers. The number of crew required changes with the number of passengers booked to sail.
These essential positions change dependant on route.
Portsmouth-Fishbourne: Captain, Chief Officer, Chief Engineer, Deck Officer, Senior Rating and two ratings.
Portsmouth Harbour-Ryde Pier Head: Captain, Chief Officer and Lead Rating.
Lymington-Yarmouth: Captain, Chief Engineer, Deck Mate, Bosun, ERC (Engine Room Competent Person), Senior Rating, Rating.
But it feels like Wightlink regularly cancel sailings due to a lack of crew?
We understand how frustrating it is when sailings are cancelled due to a shortage of a specific crew member, but it is a rare occurrence. Each year Wightlink carries 4.3 million people on more than 140 sailings a day, we cancel less than 1% of sailings for any reason – mechanical and crew related. However, when disruption does occur we realise the high impact it has on the plans of passengers scheduled for that sailing. As a result, we go to great lengths to arrange a replacement sailing as close to the original as possible. We understand that our timetable is our promise to customers, so we endeavour to keep disruption to an absolute minimum.
You will need a ticket to pass through the check in gates and access the toilets at Portsmouth Harbour. At Ryde the toilets will be before the gates. We have toilets available on our FastCats.
Our vehicle ferries and FastCats don’t have access currently but we’re working on it. Our Portsmouth Harbour, Ryde Pier Head and Portsmouth Car Ferry terminal do have customer WiFi.
We have four car ferry ports, Portsmouth Gunwharf to Fishbourne (Isle of Wight) and Lymington to Yarmouth (Isle of Wight). Our FastCat service runs from Portsmouth Harbour to Ryde Pier Head (Isle of Wight).
You can reach all our ports by vehicle, foot and public transport. For full details, you can visit our Routes and Destinations page.
Yes, they are. Our gangways are wide enough for mobility scooters and there is no extra charge to take them on-board. However, we would recommend checking before travelling on our FastCats between Portsmouth Harbour and Ryde Pier Head as sometimes we need to move our berth and on these occasions Mobility Scooters cannot cross the gangway.
There are several ways to pay that make booking with us easy.
Online bookings can be paid for using PayPal and credit and debit cards. If you call our Contact Centre or book at our Customer Service Point at the port , we will accept credit and debit cards.
If you want to pay in part or in full using Tesco Clubcard Reward Partner Codes you can book online using the special link from Tesco or by following the Tesco link in our Offers & Discounts section. Simply add your code in at the payment stage when requested.
Tesco Clubcard Reward Partner codes cannot be used in conjunction with any other discounted or promotional fare.
A 50p Ryde Pier supplement will be added to your ticket price if you’re travelling on our FastCat service to or from the Isle of Wight for Adults, Seniors, Students and one adult only in a Family ticket.
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